Tango In The Night Part 1: Big Love

I Hope You'll Understand There's A Reason Why

Beverly Hills, California
Sunday, May 24, 1987
(2:00 pm)
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"I'm actually worried, you know. More than usual."

Christine McVie was not a woman who normally wore her heart on her sleeve. She had always been the mother of the group, the strong one, the only person who could actually get the guys to quit goofing off and get back to work when they'd gone too far. She'd been through plenty in the last ten years - Stevie knew she didn't have the monopoly on heartbreak years ago when they were all going through their various breakups - but Christine had held her head up high...higher than Stevie, who had not been able to control herself when it came to telling Lindsey exactly what she was thinking at all times. She found herself drifting away from her conversation with Christine...My God, why do I keep DOING that to people these days?...and remembering the day she and Lindsey had been recording their background vocals for "You Make Loving Fun". She'd gone from shouting across the booth, "Fuck you too, asshole!" to singing gleefully, "You...you make loving fun...That's all I wanna do..." as easily as breathing. This time, as she found herself drifting off into a memory and not paying attention to the person she was speaking to, she was able to recover more quickly and zone back in. Christine was worried about John, and it showed.

"Everyone is going on and on about Mick needing to get help...and I don't deny that...but John is just as sick, you know." Stevie took a sip of her iced tea after saying that. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and they were sitting together on the back porch of Christine's house in Beverly Hills, enjoying the time in between the steak salads they had eaten for lunch out on the porch and the inevitable carrot cake she knew was coming, as this was Christine's birthday lunch to her. Stevie was going to be thirty-nine on Tuesday, and one of the silver linings of having different groups of friends who didn't get along, she'd always thought, was that she got to celebrate special occasions like her birthday multiple times with those separate groups or individuals. This was certainly not the first time she and Christine had celebrated her birthday alone together, but it was turning out to be one of the more depressing and somber, as the conversation had been about the touchiest of subjects almost since she'd sat down at the table a little bit after noon. They had discussed the Tango In The Night tour and how it seemed as though no one was prepared to go out on the road, they'd talked about how Sara had told both of them on separate phone calls recently that an intervention for Mick was a good idea, they had discussed how Cheri Caspari was proving to be another Carol Ann Harris of sorts and trying to pull Lindsey away from anything Fleetwood Mac-related just as he needed to give the band his all, and now they were discussing John's out-of-control drinking. Shit... Stevie thought...is this my birthday lunch or a group therapy meeting? Then again, she knew, when she and Christine got together in times of trouble, often, it was both. Christine's best and worst quality, Stevie had always thought, was that she wasn't one to let a problem linger - she faced it head on no matter what else was happening around her.

Christine reclined in her white wicker chair with a sigh, taking a sip of her own iced tea. She said with the distinct Christine McVie eye roll and dry-witted tone, "I can already tell this is shaping up to be the best tour ever! Jesus Christ!"

"Chris..." Stevie stifled a yawn as she leaned forward across the table. My God, why the hell am I so TIRED? "I can't explain it...and you're going to think I'm crazy...crazier, anyway...but I have a bad feeling about this tour."

"What do you mean, hon?" Christine reached for her pack of cigarettes and the fourteen-karat-gold lighter John had given her as a divorce gift ten years earlier engraved with Songbird on one side. She lit Stevie's cigarette first with the lighter, then her own. The two women sat back in their white wicker chairs like southern belles and exhaled smoke out into the yard over Christine's well-manicured rose garden.